As is known, today's rotary-drum home laundry dryers comprise: a substantially parallelepiped-shaped outer boxlike casing structured for resting on the floor; a substantially cylindrical revolving drum structured for housing the laundry to be dried, and which is housed in axially rotating manner inside the casing to rotate about its horizontally-oriented longitudinal axis, directly facing a laundry loading/unloading opening formed in the front wall of the casing; a door hinged to the front wall of the casing to rotate to and from a closing position in which the door rests completely against the front wall of the casing to close the laundry loading/unloading opening and airtight seal the revolving drum; and an electrically-powered motor assembly structured for driving into rotation the revolving drum about its longitudinal axis inside the casing.
Home laundry dryers of the above type are also provided with an open-circuit or closed-circuit, hot-air generator which is structured to circulate inside the revolving drum a stream of hot air having a low moisture content, and which flows through the revolving drum and over the laundry inside the drum to rapidly dry the laundry; and with an electronic central control unit which controls both the motor assembly and the hot-air generator to perform one of the user-selectable drying cycles stored in the same central control unit.
In most of the rotary-drum home laundry dryers currently on the market, the revolving drum has a substantially cylindrical, sleeve-shaped structure and consists in a substantially cylindrical, rigid tubular body which is structured for resting horizontally inside the appliance casing aligned to the laundry loading/unloading opening, on a number of horizontally-oriented supporting rollers which are located at the two axial ends of the tubular body, and are fixed to the appliance casing in free revolving manner so to allow the tubular body to freely rotate about its horizontally-oriented longitudinal axis.
The front rim of the tubular body surrounds the laundry loading/unloading opening and is coupled in airtight and axially rotating manner to the front wall of the appliance casing; whereas the rear rim of the tubular body abuts against the rear wall of the appliance casing and is coupled in airtight and axially rotating manner directly to said rear wall.
In particular, to avoid air leakages from the two axial ends of the tubular body, a first annular sealing gasket is interposed between the front rim of the tubular body and the front wall of the casing, and a second annular sealing gasket is interposed between the rear rim of the tubular body and the rear wall of the appliance casing.
The hot air is channeled into the tubular body via a through opening which is realized in the rear wall of the appliance casing, and which is connected to the outlet of the hot air generator via an air duct located on the back of the appliance casing. This air duct, in turn, is covered by a protective back panel firmly fixed to the rear wall of the appliance casing.
US patent application No. 2005/0132603 discloses a rotary-drum home laundry dryer having this particular structure.
Despite allowing a cost effective production of the laundry dryers, the sleeve-shaped structure of the revolving drum causes lots of problems during the on-site maintenance of the household appliance. Inspection of the rear part of the rotary-drum laundry dryer, in fact, is relatively difficult and lengthy because several elements are firmly fixed to the rear wall of the appliance casing and must be removed to grant access to the back of the revolving drum.